France’s Far Right Ready for Another Smashing Victory

by
Eric Margolis

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“Apres
moi, le deluge!” – After me, the deluge. So said French king
Louis XV, and was he ever right. His successor faced the French
Revolution and lost his head.

Much the same
can be said of France’s outgoing president, Nicholas Sarkozy. The
victory of his Socialist rival Francois Holland in last week’s presidential
election not only eclipsed the political career of the widely unloved
Sarkozy, it left his clumsily-named political party, the Union for
a Popular Movement (UMP), facing its own deluge.

As Europe’s
conservatives watch in dismay and even horror, the second big shoe
is about to drop in French politics. Far rightist Marine Le Pen
appears set to emerge triumphant from the wreckage of Frances defeated
center-right.

France holds
two-round elections for its lower house, the National Assembly,
on 10 and 17 June. Polls show Holland’s Socialists and their leftwing
allies winning some 44% of the seats; the center-right UMP 36.5%.
The Left already controls the upper house, the Senate.

Control of
both houses would allow Holland’s Socialists to implement their
vows to impose punitive taxes on the wealthy, hire 60,000 teachers
(all Socialist stalwarts, of course), reject the EU austerity pact,
boost spending, and return the minimum retirement age to 60 from
62.

Meanwhile,
the UMP faces questions of life and death. The party was cobbled
together from four center-right parties made up of Gaullists, Liberal
Gaullists, Liberal Radicals, and Christian Conservatives.

Sarkozy, made
giddy by the pomp and power of the royal presidency created for
Charles De Gaulle, long neglected party affairs, choosing to run
France like Louis XV. As a result, the party became a squabbling
collection of egos without any core philosophy or direction.

The June election
could inflict the “coup de grace” on the floundering UMP.
Not only could it be swamped by the Socialists, it must face a Faustian
existential choice.

France’s electoral
laws mirror the complex nature of its people. Nothing is simple
or straightforward. Assembly elections will be a three-way race
between Socialists, UMP, and Le Pen’s far right National Front.

With the Socialists
holding a strong lead, UMP and National Front risk splitting the
center-right vote. So electoral logic demands that they collaborate
in many voting districts and agree to support a common candidate.

But the National
Front – xenophobic, racist, violently anti-Muslim, and anti-Europe
– is poison to moderate French and many members of the UMP. To no
surprise, UMP may split, or disintegrate, over the issue of joining
forces with the National Front, seen by many French as a reborn
fascist movement. In fact, it’s not really fascist, but an avatar
of the old 1940 far right, ultra conservative, ultra Catholic Vichy
movement.

National Front
leader Marine Le Pen is clearly calculating that June elections
will see the UMP crushed. This, in turn, may lead to massive defections
of former UMP deputies to the National Front. Meaning that the National
Front could become Frances official opposition to the ruling Socialists.

Talk about
déjà vu. Such a sweeping change would return France
to its pre-war political landscape, when hard Left and hard Right
were locked in bitter confrontation. Marine Le Pen could well emerge
as the angry voice of many Europeans – a prospect that causes shudders
across conservative-ruled Europe.

She
could also prove the nemesis of the European Union. Le Pen has vowed
to oppose austerity pacts, quit the Euro, restore the franc, and
follow economic mercantilism. Her anti-EU, anti-free trade policies
are attracting many people across Europe and even in Russia.

Fortunately,
Francois Holland could prove a counter-balance to the ascendant
Right. He is a moderate, cautious centrist politician given to pragmatism
rather than ideology. His popularity and image of geniality and
caring about people will help him withstand the forces of both Left
and Right trying to pull him in different directions.

Even so, Marine
Le Pen and her aggressive rightists are likely to become an ever-increasing
threat to the French Republic as economic conditions worsen. It
seems only a matter of time before fascism rears its head again
in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Greece is already on the way. Failure
to implement austerity plans will bring economic convulsions and
with them the bully boys in black.

May
12, 2012

Eric
Margolis [send
him mail] is the author of War
at the Top of the World and the new book, American
Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the
West and the Muslim World. See his
website.

Copyright
© 2012 Eric Margolis

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